Fall protection of operators working in a situation where a fall can take place over a sufficient distance to cause injury or death is becoming generally required in most industries. Many arrangements are provided for mounting an anchor post on a structure adjacent the worker so that a personal fall arrest system can be attached to the anchor.
Such personal fall arrests systems include a harness together with a cable system for attachment to the harness and to a suitable anchor where the cable system can be paid out to allow the worker to move to a required location but the cable system arrests any fall within a short distance. Such devices are well known and commercially available and many different designs have been proposed.
In most cases the structure itself provides or has attached a suitable anchoring post so that the relatively high loading necessary can be readily provided by a simple post rigidly attached to the structure.
In the interior buildings, such anchors can be mounted on a rail which allows the anchor to slide longitudinally along a track attached to the rail.
However some structures are unsuitable for attachment of an anchor post or have been designed without the possibility of attachment of an anchor post so that operators in this environment are often unprotected against fall. In a particular area where this is problematic is in that related to aircraft where aircraft design does not lead to the suitability of attachment of mounting posts. Up until now, therefore, operators working in this environment have remained unprotected with the potential of serious injury or death.